Smoke Signals 5
JANUARY 15, 2011
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Gary Lewis keeps busy
making miniature
swashbuckling vessels
By Ron Karten
Smoke Signals staff writer
His grandfather, Frank Lewis,
worked in bone elk, deer antlers,
"whatever he could get."
His father, Delbert Lewis, mar
ried to Norma Mercier, an Elder of
the Tribe who passed almost three
years ago, was a sign painter who
also worked in pen and ink.
An uncle, Frank Forster, whose
wife was Marion Mercier, an Elder
of the Tribe and mother to Tribal
Elder Sharon Hanson, had a work
shop in Rickreall where he made
things as diverse as arrowheads
and tables.
"He was a real craftsman," says
Gary Lewis, an Elder of the Tribe
himself. "When you grow up around
artists, you pick it up."
Since he was 8, maybe 9, Gary
has been making things just to play
with. He grew up in a Sheridan still
deep into the timber business.
"I loved to make logging trucks,"
he says.
Today, his home in Salem is
alternately showcase and work
space for his talents. In the liv
ing room are large windows, the
doorway and white crown molding
all around the room that is his
work. In a hobby room off the liv
ing room, table-sized ships share
space with hundreds of collector
cars reminiscent of his hot rod days
half a century ago.
At 15, Lewis turned his first car
into a hot rod.
It. is here where his grandchil
dren, Tribal members Inatye, 7,
and Saghaley, 9, could go wild.
(Lewis tries to be protective of both
the children and the models.)
In the garage is a jeep that Lewis
picked up a year ago without doors
or refinements like a paint job.
Kathi, his wife, came home from
the casino one night, saw. it and
said, "Uh oh."
Today, it is a full restoration.
In a workshop at the back of the
house, and inside a room maybe
6 feet square, are the tools of his
1 -ll
Tribal Elder Gary Lewis
sands a railing on a
wooden boat that he's
building in a wood shop
at his Salem home. One
of Lewis' hobbies is wood
working, which he has
used to build a number of
small replica ships.
This is just one of the small
ships that Tribal Elder Gary
Lewis has built in the wood
shop of his Salem home.
trade. Two old lathes, one from
the 1930s and a band saw among
them, and centered is a work table
with the latest ship to emerge from
Lewis's imagination.
Asked where his design ideas
come from, he said, "Are you old
enough to remember Errol Flynn?"
He takes them from the swashbuck
ling adventures of one of America's
great early actors.
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A tiny wheel on a miniature ship that Tribal Elder Gary Lewis built.
The talent, he says, is "just hard
work." He points to his index finger
that has endured almost 20 indi
vidual scars over the years.
He makes the boats out of half
inch strips of wood glued together,
then covered with Fiberglass. He
built a full-sized canoe entirely of
Fiberglass 25 years ago. Out in the
back yard today is a 16-foot strip
canoe, the second full-sized canoe
he has made.
"Don't forget to ask him to see
the carousel," says his son, Tribal
member David Lewis who also is
manager of the Tribe's Cultural
Resources Department. Gary used
a music-box mechanism for the
music and the rotation.
After Gary and Kathi married
in the late 1980s, he started mak
ing carousels and he matched a
Ferris wheel to one of them; both
black walnut. The third piece was
a matching wagon carrying ani
mals. "I talked him into entering them
into a contest at the State Fair,"
says Kathi. They won the blue
ribbon.
"Let them know that it's all for
sale," says Kathi. The money is one
thing, but the reason the Lewises
mention it is because they need
the room for new projects. Not so
long ago, he had to sell 100 to 150
of his model hot rods to make room
for others.
All this is strictly hobby work
for Lewis. He puts in as much as
30 hours a week "as much as I
can," he says on these projects.
He also gives plenty away.
Not so long ago, their neighbor,
Oscar, came across the street to
help them replace a retaining wall
of railroad ties with a rock wall.
"He did most of the work," says
Kathi. "His son, Brandon, would
come with him and every day he
would ask Gary, 'Will you build me
a boat?' " Or to Kathi, he would ask,
"Is he making it, yet?"
Gary put in three weeks work and
then it was done.
"His eyes got huge when he saw
it!" Kathi says. "He raced to Gary
and threw his arms around him. He
said, T love you, Gary!'"
Now five years retired, Lewis
has made a living mainly as an
electronics technician, for many
years at the service of casinos.
He kept slots working at Chinook
Winds Casino for a decade and
worked at Spirit Mountain Casino
as well.
He learned electronics while serv
ing 10 years 1962-72 in the
' Army. He served in Germany and
Italy before Vietnam in 1967-68
with the 41st Signal Battalion.
He started his working career as
one of the few folks who saw an up
side to the 1962 Labor Day storm.
He was working in the roofing de
partment of Montgomery Ward in
those days, and it seemed like every
house in the valley had lost its roof
during the storm.
His dream project, he said, is "a
real boat, a sailing ship." B